


grey skies to waking up in spring

by pherion



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - College/University, Angst, Emotional Hurt, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, References to Drugs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-13
Updated: 2020-07-13
Packaged: 2021-03-04 17:55:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25250461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pherion/pseuds/pherion
Summary: asahi has to move to the states because of his mom in his second year of high school. nishinoya thought he was being alright with that until he chose to go to an american university himself.
Relationships: Azumane Asahi/Nishinoya Yuu
Comments: 2
Kudos: 17





	grey skies to waking up in spring

**Author's Note:**

> for a collab fic i wrote with tumblr freeendzz<3
> 
> songfic to khalid's american teen

Too many goodbyes. That’s where it went wrong. 

Nishinoya looks at one of his old picture books, moving his thumb over a couple of them. 

He swallows loudly. 

It was bringing back memories he’d wanted to forget and memories he wanted to keep.

He smiles as memories start flooding back.

“Asaaahi~” Nishinoya sang, walking into the club room, holding his favorite sports magazine in front of his face. “Did you see that they ranked someone new the best ace of the country? How impressive. You could definitely be up there some time, you know?"

Nishinoya was too invested in his magazine to notice that Asahi was not actually there to reply to him.

“Nishinoya?” Daichi was the first one to speak up to him. He looked up, confused that the person he was looking for wasn’t actually at the place he expected him to be. 

“Ah, Daichi-san! Is Asahi not here?” He scanned the club room one more, but the small space could not even give away the hiding place of the tall and broad teen.

“You didn’t hear?” 

Nishinoya didn’t like the look Daichi was giving him — it gave him an uneasy feeling; he wanted to ignore the look.

“Don’t know what? What should I have heard?”

Daichi’s lips moved to talk and words were being spoken, but he couldn’t hear them: all Nishinoya heard was white noise. 

Did he hear that right?

That couldn’t be right. Could it?

Before Daichi could tell him anything else, Nishinoya stormed off. It couldn’t be right, and it wasn’t. Not until he had confirmed it himself.

He ran through the hallways, he _had_ to go find Asahi. Nishinoya scanned the classrooms that belonged to the second years. He realized he didn’t even know which class Asahi exactly belonged to, so running through the hallway was the only option left. 

Multiple second years yelled at him — what was a tiny first year doing here? Even a teacher came to catch his ass. He clicked his tongue as he dodged the arms of the teacher and just kept sprinting past the classrooms— there. There he was.

They were just switching teachers, so that was a plus for Nishinoya. He smacked his hand against the door post, catching his breath in a few, and yelled out his name.

“Azumane Asahi!”

The boy in question looked up, scared. His long hair fell along his face and Nishinoya found himself struggling for air once more.

He heard the mumbling of his classmates, asking each other what a midget like him was doing in their second year department. Nishinoya couldn’t care less. That was far from his concern at the moment

Asahi was about to look down, ignoring Nishinoya’s call for him. Nishinoya clicked his tongue again, eager to just walk into the classroom and drag his ass out of there, into the hallways, toilets even, to talk to him. He needed to set this straight — _now._

“If you don’t get here within two seconds I will not treat you to your favorite ramen anymore!” 

With his eyes on fire, it seemed to do the trick. Asahi’s grew wide and Nishinoya knew he had it in the bag. Now he just needed to confirm that what had told him was a lie and they could happily carry on back to volleyball practice.

“Ah, Nishinoya,” Asahi sounded hesitant, “what got you here?”

“I saw you weren’t in the club room, so I came to personally get you.”

“I see…” 

Nishinoya eyed his senpai. What would make him avoid eyes with him and sound all nervous but that one thing being true? He bit the inside of his bottom lip. 

“Noya… I really have to—”

Before Asahi could finish his sentence, he cut him off. “Is it true you’re movingmigrating to the US?”

Asahi’s eyes became as big as plates. He swallowed loudly. 

“Yeah,” he finally confessed after several heavy moments of silence between them. Nishinoya didn’t even hear the people passing by them, whispering about their appearances. 

“I can’t believe it,” Nishinoya cried out. “Why?” His voice creaked and he hated every second after it. He was _not_ going to cry.

“It’s okay,” Asahi said, his smile soft — as well as his eyes. They were promising Nishinoya something. But he couldn’t tell what. He was too caught up in his own feelings which were running all around the place.

“Why is it okay?”

“Because my mom promised me it’s only temporary,” he said, to which Nishinoya scoffed it sounded too unsure to him. “It’s not a goodbye then, you know.”

“I know…”

They talked about their afternoon plans after that, but their conversation still didn’t sit right with Nishinoya. 

He couldn’t let it go either after they parted ways in school — or after they parted ways on the airport and Asahi had bid them (him especially) goodbyes ten thousand times. 

To Asahi, it felt like ten thousand goodbyes weren’t enough. It wouldn’t ever be. He wanted to stay in Japan, grow up with his friends and play volleyball with them. Not a sudden message that went “We’re moving to El Paso, Texas, in two months.” Never that.

To Nishinoya, however, it felt like ten thousand goodbyes were enough to run away.

Gray skies were looming everywhere Nishinoya looked. 

They were hopeless times, hopeless hours, hopeless minutes and hopeless seconds. 

Nishinoya thought back to their shared moments many times. But they never felt quite real anymore. They were fading and he didn’t feel as connected to them as he’d felt before. 

Nishinoya turned eighteen and he had decided he was going to study abroad in the States. Miyagi was reminding just a little too much of things he wanted to forget — what was he thinking about again?

In California, nothing really changed for Nishinoya. 

The only thing that was a plus to him was the fact that he was finally accepting his sexuality, but… realizing it too late. 

Was it the college life, the friends passing out in Uber rides, the red cups, or the lines he snorted? Maybe. Nishinoya couldn’t really tell. 

Girls still seemed pretty to him — but something was off. It wasn’t complete. Figuring it out with boys and girls alike. Nothing felt right. 

Staying up late and missing morning class, showing up to afternoon classes absolutely wasted but not giving one flying fuck. 

Who cared, right? He was abroad, in the States, and he was going to make the most out of it.

He was living the dream.

He thought.

It was eating him from the inside out.

Something was missing. Something that couldn’t be completely fixed in a snap of the fingers.

But Nishinoya didn’t know what it could be. 

It hurt, but he ignored it. 

He had his pain… killers, that would do the trick in making him feel numb for a second or three. 

Before the pain would strike and he would have to succumb to it. 

His friends told him that that was the American Dream he was living. 

Was it really?

He was starting to develop anxiety every time he drank alcohol. 

He was starting to feel it was bad for him. 

He started faking drinking in front of his friends. He started faking being more drunk than he actually was. 

The lie of an ‘American teen.’

He huffed every time he heard those two words. As much as his ‘friends’ wanted to make him an American teen living the perfect American Dream life, Nishinoya couldn’t help thinking back to his hometown, to his childhood friends and missing them immensely. 

A couple months later he got a call from an unknown number. He didn’t recognize it and clicked it away from his screen. The caller didn’t stop and Nishinoya was starting to get irritated. 

It was a buildup from unfortunate events happening. His GPA not being what he’d expected it to be, his friends ditching him, his parents stopping funding him in any financial need for university, and his life 

He threw his phone, not bothering to watch where it landed. He heard a loud smack and glass shattering. 

He didn’t even need to look up to know what had happened. 

As if a volcano erupted, Nishinoya lost the cool he was holding all this time. 

Days— weeks passed by. Nishinoya was living in a haze. He felt drunk most of the time, even at times when he hadn’t really had any alcohol in his system for days. People would visit him and tell him he was faking his anxiety attacks or his drunken slurs…

And…

What if he was..?

He couldn’t tell anymore by now.

Two months later, a tall and broad figure sets food on California ground, breathing in the American atmosphere he missed so much.

He got an Uber and made his way over towards his goal. He was determined to reach it today, whatever would happen.

Spring was arriving. However, to Nishinoya, the dark winter clouds weren’t fading. 

He was feeling numb most of the time, and the warm California weather wasn’t changing that either. 

A sudden knock bounced back on his dorm door. He was too dazed and frozen to react, but he didn’t feel the need to stand up and open it. 

His dorm mate was out, so he didn’t feel the need to socialize with strangers either. His head was full with too many thoughts, and he had no one to blame but himself. 

“Nishinoya Yuu? Are you in here?”

Nishinoya’s heart stopped. He didn’t have any Japanese friends — or any friends that would call him by his name like that.

Most of all… the familiarity to those tones— no. He was dreaming it. Imagining it. The drugs and the alcohol were doing its work even though he hadn’t had anything for three days.

“Nishinoya?” The voice asked for him again. 

He was still holding on to the fact that his imagination was playing with him. It was probably the effect of being without alcohol, now that he thought about it more clearly. He snickered, no way it could be—

The door knob rattled loudly. Thank God it was locked.

“Yuu…” the voice said, hesitantly.

Nishinoya stopped breathing. His heart was throbbing in his throat and the tears were burning behind his eyes. _That voice…_

“Yuu,” he said again, “it’s Asahi.”

His vision went blank, his heart stopped running laps through his body, and he was losing touch in his body. An out of body experience had nothing on how he was feeling after hearing that beautiful voice call for his name. 

It took him a second — maybe even minutes, Nishinoya couldn’t really tell the time anymore — before he regained his senses. He stumbled over to the door, his fingers shaking immensely, trying to find his keys to open the door. It felt like centuries passed before he’d finally found them, and before he was finally able to get them into the keyhole to make it meet its goal. He flipped the key, heard the lock slide open, and gave a violent pull to the door to open it. 

But the hallway was empty. 

“No…” Nishinoya breathed out, his voice [verb] the most silent whisper ever. “No…”

He could only hear his own heart beat running through his veins, drumming through his eardrum, his palms turning sweaty. 

Had he really been imaging it? Dreaming it? Had he really? 

It couldn’t be… Had the drugs and the alcohol really done that much damage to him that he was starting to imagine his childhood lover in front of his eyes?

While Nishinoya was experiencing a haze he couldn’t describe, the door to the dorm room next door opened. A sleepy head revealed itself, the face of one of the neighbors he vaguely recognized.

“Yuu?” His voice creaked. 

Nishinoya moved his head to the side, ever so slowly. His eyes were wide open and ready for any kind of insult his neighbor would once again throw at him. “What?” he bit at him.

“Who the fuck was that motherfucker banging on your door just now?”

He widened his eyes even more — if possible. 

“Wh… what?” 

His neighbor clicked his tongue. “Don’t act all lazy and brand new all of a sudden. The dude was clearly yelling out your name.”

Swallowing loudly, he hastily pulled on some shorts and a clean shirt, grabbed his keys, thanked his neighbor (“The fuck? Apologize to me instead, you mother fucker!”) and ran off to no clue where — the entrance hall, the elevator, the staircase… he could be anywhere.

He rushed down the hallways, ran down the stairs, all just to try and find him, chanting the name over and over again while making his way to the entrance hall.

He just couldn’t let this go to waste.

The last floor of stairs seemed to take ages and Nishinoya prayed that he wasn’t gone yet. He crossed the corner, nearly slamming his body around it, making sure not to stumble and make a fall onto the floor. 

There he saw him. The brown coat that fell so peacefully, so elegantly down his body. 

With no time to catch his breath, he rushed forward, grabbing onto the coat. 

“Asahi,” he managed to say, his breathing so unsteady he was losing his stability. 

The figure turned around and revealed the boy — no, the man that he’d fallen in love with at age 16, that moved away days before he would turn 17, and who was still wearing the same soft smile that was made special for him at age 22. 

“Asahi…” He stumbled a little. The sudden adrenaline rush was making him unable to hold his feet up straight.

“Nishinoya!” Strong arms reached forward and caught him. Nishinoya chuckled, it was as if he was a damsel in distress and needed saving. “Are you okay?”

“Perfectly fine,” he said while freeing himself from Asahi’s arms and took a second to study the face of the man that was standing in front of him. “What are you doing here?”

“Let’s go outside for a walk?” Asahi asked instead, looking outside at the beautiful blue sky that was falling over them. It took Nishinoya off guard, but nonetheless he nodded. He didn’t mind that (and he was glad he had actually put on some proper clothes before rushing off).

Nishinoya followed Asahi, who had taken the lead in walking towards the front door of the building. Still in a haze, he didn’t really know what to say or how to process this situation. It also seemed like Asahi was avoiding the conversation he was trying to start and he didn’t really know what to follow that up with. 

They found themselves outside, walking over to a bench that was placed in the shade of a tree. 

“Are you okay over here?” Asahi asked, cleaning the bench for him as if he were some kind of delicate object. Nishinoya nodded and sat down next to him.

“I can imagine you have a lot of questions,” Asahi started, sounding unsure and not meeting Nishinoya’s eyes when the latter was clearly trying to make eye contact. 

“What are you doing here?” Nishinoya asked again, breaking the silence that went before it. He needed that answer first before anything else.

Asahi was still not looking him in his eyes and he was starting to become bothered by it. Before opening his mouth to comment on his childhood friend not speaking up, he broke the silence. 

“I was worried about you.”

Nishinoya could only stare.

“I… I moved back to Japan for university, but the moment I set foot on familiar ground, I heard you had left to go enter university in the US. I thought you were maybe avoiding me for the choices I had made, since I knew how much you despised the fact that I had to move to El Paso because my mother was switching military bases.”

Words seemed to have left him. Nodding was the only thing he could do. 

“I wanted to visit you many times,” he admitted. “I really did. I had heard from Daichi and Suga where you had run off to, and I wanted to chase you,” he chuckled, and for the first time in a long time, Nishinoya felt his heart warm up a little. “However… things got in between. University was more difficult than I thought and I was struggling a lot.”

Nishinoya nodded. University being difficult… he knew a thing or two about that.

“Then I heard from Tanaka that you had gotten admitted to the hospital a month ago—” _right, that had happened,_ Nishinoya thought. He had nearly forgotten about it, “—because of an incident, and I knew I had to come see you, whatever it took.”

“Then why did it take you two months?” he asked, his voice broken. He had been staring at the man sitting next to him, and he hadn’t averted his eyes any second. He was clenching his jaw, trying his hardest to not leave any tears roll down his cheek.

“I wanted to make sure you were out of the hospital first, and when I looked for flights, yesterday’s was the first I could get.” 

It seemed like Asahi saw that Nishinoya wasn’t completely buying the entire story, so Asahi took Nishinoya’s hands in his and looked at him, straight in his eyes, for the first time today — for the first time in five years.

“I’m dead serious,” Asahi promised him. He squeezed his hands and it were enough reason and the final sign for Nishinoya to finally let his tears out. The first couple rolled down and it was enough for Nishinoya to forgive Asahi for anything he did or didn’t do. Now he just needed Asahi’s forgiveness. 

“Wh-why are you crying?” Nishinoya was too blinded by his tears that he hadn’t seen Asahi’s flushed face. “What’s going on?”

“I’m sorry,” Nishinoya managed to utter. “I’m so sorry. I promise I’m doing better and I’m sorry for never contacting you. I always blamed you for never contacting me and when I sobered up it was the first time I realized that it was me all the time.”

He knew he probably wasn’t making any sense towards Asahi, but that’s all he could give him in this moment. 

While he was busy apologizing for all the times he’d forgotten about Asahi, had gotten drunk or done drugs, Asahi did the unthinkable. He embraced Nishinoya in the warmest hug he’d felt in ages.

“Please stop crying,” Asahi whispered in his ear. “I know you’re sorry. I accept your apology, so please, stop crying. I miss my cheery and always happy Yuu, the one I could laugh and joke with and was always the one cheering _me_ up.” He chuckled, “when did we start switching roles?”

Nishinoya snickered, wiping dry his wet cheeks, but not removing himself from Asahi’s embrace. “You’re right. You should have seen me wilding out at the parties, though. Now _that_ was a Noya you would have never even dreamt of— _Uhhh,_ not that you should be dreaming of me or anything.”

Thank the _Lord_ they were locked in an embrace, or Asahi would have seen Nishinoya’s darkened cheeks. 

Asahi, however, laughed at Nishinoya’s comment and loosened himself from their embrace, with enough time for Nishinoya to calm his feelings down. 

“I missed you a lot, you know,” Asahi finally admitted. 

It was all Nishinoya needed to hear.

“You did?”

“Absolutely. Sorry I didn’t contact you in so long. I’m really regretting it. You never have to apologize, I will always blame it on me.”

Nishinoya could only stare and not reply. Talking to Asahi like this was honestly reminding him of his bubbly past self, where had that gone to? He felt… relaxed, warm, and free for the first time in a long time.

Suddenly he felt it even better; the gray skies that he thought were looming over his head and in his mind, were disappearing as snow under the gentle sun. 

**Author's Note:**

> tysm for reading. i never wrote asanoya before so i really hope i was portraying their styles and characteristics well enough!!


End file.
